


Where The Long Road Ends

by Fireway



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: F/M, Soulmates AU, also arya changes her name so many times but like its always arya, angst with happy ending, dont think about the universe think about the angst, westeros history is mix of usa/western europe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-10-17 08:03:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20617706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fireway/pseuds/Fireway
Summary: Arya and Gendry are meant to be together - but the timing is always just a bit off.First chapter is canon compliant.





	Where The Long Road Ends

In their first lives, it was almost as if the gods were taunting them – so close, yet so far. The start weren’t quite aligned, just a bit off.

She was Arya Stark of Winterfell, the girl who’d killed Death itself, presenting itself as the Night King. She was made of ice and blood, as her head was crowned with blood again and again – it was not the red of her sister or her mother, but deep and dark burgundy – it was death, it was life.

Gendry had never seen anyone as beautiful.

Gendry could barely recall his mother; he knew she had a golden hair and a soft voice as she sung him to sleep in the hovel they called home. He remembered how she told him of the story of soulmates; souls linked so tightly together; universe wouldn’t rest until they could be together. It was an inspiration to many great songs, many great tragedies on stage as women married someone for wealth or power, as their hearts longed for another. More tragedies were played out on bloodied fields as the weapons clashed together as men who had lost their loves fought until their dying breath, started wars to rest their heads in the lap of fair maidens of the songs.

Gendry always thought he had nobody like that – it was all a story, anyway. One to soothe kids, or to sing songs about – but real life was blood, and sweat, and shit, and working until you could hardly stand, hoping to earn enough to warm a bed of a tavern girl – maybe get a babe in her belly, so you can stay, have an excuse to start settling until you die in a war started by nobles or some horrific sickness.

But then he had seen him – Arry. No, _her_. And as she had shoved him with all her might to make him stumble ad fall to the ground, and he laughed at her as she walked away, he knew he had found the maiden of the songs. Only this wasn’t a maiden with flowers woven to her hair, but eyes as sharp as the dagger she now carried on her hip, her needle replaced with a sword, the girl who had the spirit of a wild wolf. She was terrifying, but in a way a where he couldn't tear his eyes away. She was beautiful, in a way where he could hardly catch his breath whenever he saw her. 

Gendry had thought he’d never see her again after losing her once – but when Gendry was riding to Winterfell, and for a second he was sure he saw a glimpse of her in the crowd, and he found himself wondering if his mother was right. Maybe universe really was a trickster, trying to get them together.

And then, he was sure of it as she was there, in the forge of Winterfell, eyes full of mischief and wonder. He felt like all the air was pulled from around him, and all he saw was her, and when she left the heat of the forge, it took all of his willpower to not follow her right away. 

Gods, he had never wanted anything as much as her – sure, there were the few girls he had been with, and sure they made his breeches tight and soot-stained hands sweaty, but nobody had made him want something like Arya Stark did.

He wanted her – not just her body, but something deeper; he wanted to love her, marry her, be the one she craved as well. As he forged another dagger for a hopeless war, he kept finding his ears red with the thoughts in his head – not the ones where he stained the highborn lady’s bed, or the one where she was pushed against the tree of the nearby forest, but the ones where he kept thinking about her in his arms, sleeping, sometimes with his babe in her belly; yet the daydreams that caught him off guard were the ones where they were fully clothed, sometimes in a dinner table with a little girl with black locks and her eyes, sometimes he dreamed of them walking in a forest he didn’t recognize, as they shared the moment between them – sometimes there was a little house at the edge of the forest, all the shit Gendry knew could never happen. He could dream all the forbidden dreams of Arya Stark, but he couldn't ever have them.

He was too bloody lowborn.

And then Arya Stark made his knees buckle as her lips were on his, as he heard the soft laughter against his skin, and for a moment he thought it could all be true – a little girl with winter eyes, the little house for them to call their own.

And as his lips travelled from between the valley of her breasts, his work-hardened fingertips drawing small circles against her hips, he couldn’t help the smile on his lips – this was where he was supposed to be. She adjusted her position above him, and for a moment he thought she was pulling away, escaping again – as his fingers softly pressed against her hipbones, as a silent plea, Gendry heard Arya chuckle quietly above him.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

And as Gendry got drunk on her taste, her smell, the way the scars felt under his lips as he kissed each before lifting his head up to kiss her lips again, he prayed it was true.

Yet things never worked out like that for them, as the gods loved playing tricks.

As she stood on the deck of her ship, staring out to the Eastern coast of Westeros, she was sure she saw Gendry standing in the battlements of Storm’s End, all in black, and with that, she was gone forever. 

Arya had never believed in soulmates. They were for silly girls, like Sansa. Or, Sansa of their childhood, not the Queen sitting on the throne of North. Sansa, with red hair and gentle soul, not Arya, whose fingers were forever stained with blood, soul wretched and tired of running, tired of death - yet running away again. 

And as Gendry kept telling himself universe would let the waves wash her ship back to him soon, Arya turned away to look into the horizon, and told herself it could never be her.

**Author's Note:**

> i promise there will be a happy ending


End file.
